While I am in Canada I make many calls to Nicaragua, for personal and business reasons.
Most of the time If the person I am trying to reach is connected to the internet I used Facebook Calling, Skype Call, or WhatsApp call (WhatsApp being very popular in Latin America). Some people also use LINE (referred to as Linea, although you won;t find it searching the app store with the spanish name from Canada).
Of course, these are the best options as they are free, but requires the person you are trying to contact having access to internet, which is not always the case. Outside of Managua I find the amount of people who have a phone with a data plan are very few, and those with a smartphone capable of running the apps is rising but a lot of them still have the little plastic 400c movistar phones.
Anyways, I'm often forced to find other methods of calling mobile numbers.
Skype is probably the most common method people would think of and with the pay as go, non subscription, option is costs 26c/minute. Its a bit cheaper if you get the 26.99 monthly subscription, at 22.5 c/minute, which gives you 120 minutes. The minutes do not roll over so although the rate is slightly less you have to make sure that you use all the minutes in a month otherwise its not a better deal. I also find that the Skype connection is not the best when it comes to calling Nicaraguan Mobile numbers. Skype has a connection fee which, iirc, is about 60cents...which isn't cheap as calls are often dropped.
Another option is the smartel phone card available at shoppers drug mart. It used to be available at 7-11 but they have gotten rid of them in place of the card called ci-ci...which has a higher/minute rate and makes you call a local number to connect, not a 1 866 number like smartel. This means that if you are calling from a cell phone and have only X amounts of minutes/month and not an unlimited plan, the use of the calling card will actually eat into your own minutes where as, for me, the 1 866 number does not. The connection, i find is actually better, although typing the pin number and selecting the options from the menu does take more time than Skype. Price is 25c/minute
Cheapest option I have found for pre-paid phone cards is called TALK South America. I have bought it online, they send the code to you via email. Costs 19.8 cents and no connection fee.
I have tried a few places that advertize 15c/minute but they often have high connection and maintenance fees which brings the actual cost/minute up quite a bit.
I'm hoping someone has a better option, if not, this the info I have.
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